


Eavesdropper

by gouguruheddo



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Canon Universe, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Jearmin, M/M, Manga Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-08
Updated: 2017-06-08
Packaged: 2018-11-10 21:46:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11135316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gouguruheddo/pseuds/gouguruheddo
Summary: Jean happens across all kind of intimate situations, and he's not quite sure how he is so unlucky.





	Eavesdropper

**Author's Note:**

  * For [deathtakesapicklechip](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=deathtakesapicklechip).



> For deathtakesapicklechip on Tumblr. They won third place on my Eruri giveaway! They requested for silly awkward Jean and Eruri moments... And then I made this sad piece of shit! Enjoy! :D

Jean is cursed with being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It has become a running joke among the cadets. “Who did you see this time?” Eren leans in on his elbow across the table, a toothy grin plastered on his face.

“Shut up.”

“I bet it was Hanna and Franz again.”

“Shut up, Eren!”

“Looks like it was.” Connie says with a grin.

Jean is red faced--cheeks, nose, and ears--and he’s already been put on so much cleaning duty from the prior conflicts with Eren. He huffs, slams his hands down on the table and walks out of the mess hall into the cold autumn air. He grips the railing of the small porch as he tries to soothe his rage. He feels a hand on his shoulder that he turns into. He’s greeted with a gentle smile and freckles like the stars.

It works every time.

The anger melts through his fingers and slip from the wood bannister. He nods as they both return to the barracks to sit under a blanket and share a piece of bread. They talk about times back in their hometowns that leave sad, lingering smiles.

\---

The stables are never a good place to be when there is no assigned duties.

Jean holds a big fold of blankets in his arm, rounds the corner to his horse’s stables when he hears it.

“Oh. Oh  _ yes _ .” A girl mutters. There’s the sound of bodies hitting against wood partitions, bridles and leads clacking the surfaces as the unseen girl lets out a breathy moan.

Jean rolls his eyes, turns back, and figures he’ll finish his chores when the maturity level of the cadet corps reaches somewhere above horny teenager levels.

He catches brown hair under green tree leaves. They paint his body like stained glass, warp across him like reflections in pond water. He has an apple for him, passes it to him and smiles like he always does. The well of his optimism is bottomless, and it swells, spreads to Jean and hydrates him. Cools him, pulls him to his knees and next to him. Their thighs touch, and when he takes a bite, he finds the fruit is juicy.

Jean holds his hand and rolls his eyes when he laughs. Perhaps they are not much better.

\---

Fraternizing is against the rules, but it’s not highly regulated. The showers weren’t safe either.

Jean smashes his fist into a wall. It cuts the knuckles open, a thick splinter lodging into the middle one. He tuts as he shakes his hand out. He can already feel it bruising, and it pisses him off more. He rushes to a water bucket and shoves his hand into it and rubs at it. He shakes his head, bites his lips so he doesn’t scream.

Two feet up on the ledge of the shower stall, two feet planted on the floor. Gentle moaning behind a muffled hand.

He can hear it. It drives him mad, and he just wants to  _ scream _ .

Jean rushes out of the showers, huffs out ragged breaths as his knuckles inflame, grow an angry pink just like his face. His cheeks. His ears.

He misses him so much and he just can’t even fucking believe how unfair the world is. And now he’s seen the world outside, has felt his blades hit actual titan flesh--not dummies--and he could have saved him. If he had been in his squad, he could have protected him, and maybe the could have been eating shit in Mitras. They could grow fat and old together.

He scoffs, chokes on a sob that sticks inside his nose, and he sits awake in his bunk until the sun rises the next morning.

\---

Jean lingers the halls of the commanding officer’s offices. He’s slightly drunk, full of good rich foods the Survey Corps never got the chance to see. He was here for something, for some reason, but he can’t remember. He still feels high from his fight with Eren in the mess hall, smiles at the memory. He looked pretty tough. Armin looked pretty impressed.

“I don’t like it.”

Jean raises an eyebrow, draws toward the sliver of light coming through the doorway to Erwin’s office.

“Please.”

“Erwin, you know damn well what is going to happen.”

Jean comes up to the wall, presses against it and angles his head to get a good view of the room. It’s dark and dimly lit by a few candelabras. The orange light flickers in a draft from the window.

“We will advance, and we will reclaim Shinganshina.”

“You will  _ die _ .”

“We will reclaim Shinganshina, and we open the basement.”

“Erwin, fucking  _ listen _ to me.”

“I hear you.”

“You can’t fight like you used to.”

“I do not need to fight in order to command.”

“Tell that to a titan.”

“We may be able to depending on what we discover in the basement.”

There’s a slam of a drawer. Levi’s voice dips. “I’m not fucking around, Erwin. You go out there and you  _ will _ die. And then all of humanity is  _ fucked _ .”

“You and Hange have your orders.”

“I don’t  _ give _ a shit.”

“Levi. This is exhausting.”

“You’re telling me.”

“If I had a better plan, do you not think we would be following that instead?”

Levi is quiet for a long moment. Jean lets out a long, silent draw of breath before he sucks in another to hold. He flattens against the wall and inches toward the crack in the door.

“Please don’t.” Levi’s voice is so soft, Jean thinks for a moment that Levi may have just sighed.

Erwin shifts in his chair, the old wood creaking under his weight, his only arm leaning heavily on the desk in front of him. Levi sways into him, buries his nose into blonde hair and closes his eyes. “Levi, you know I must. They will not follow anybody else.”

“They’ll follow me.” His lips muffle in Erwin’s hair.

“They are my responsibility.  _ You _ are my responsibility.”

Jean leans in toward the crack as their voices get softer.

“We need you  _ here _ .” Levi says, it comes out soft like butterfly wings. The most gentle Jean has ever heard the captain speak.

“They need me out  _ there _ .” Erwin says, it comes out tough as rusty nails. It’s the commander through and through.

Levi grasps the front of Erwin’s shirt, over his bolo tie, pulls at it with a slight desperation, his forehead pressing to the side of Erwin’s head. “ _ I _ need you here.” His eyes flutter up and open, meet the crack at the door and briefly lock with Jean. Jean sputters, trips back over his own feet and into the side of the wall, his back flush against it as if trying to vanish into the stone. There’s whispering, and Jean closes his eyes, holds his breath and imagines his escape route. If he just adjusts his weight, he can speed walk away without a peep and...

“Jean.” Erwin’s voice sounds into the hallway. Jean whimpers once before taking a step away from the door. Plan of escape in motion. He spins on his toe and stops mid step as Erwin’s baritone reverberates into the hallway. “ _ Jean Kirstein _ .”

Jean closes his eyes tight. He wasn’t supposed to see that. Hear that. Be around that. That was the commander and captain’s moment, and something about it was  _ too _ intimate to handle.

“Get in here, brat.” Levi barks.

Jean slaps his hand to his face, sets his bones steady, and breathes a series of raspberries from his lips before turning toward the door. He presses it open with his knuckles, steps into the opening and waits in the doorframe. “Sir?”

“Jean, please come here.” Erwin says. 

Jean steps forward into the room. Levi watches him with lazy uninterest, turns his head to look at Erwin, his hip resting on the side of desk. “It’s after curfew.” Levi says.

“Y-yes, I am aware, sir.”

“We leave for Shinganshina in the morning. We need every soldier’s strength at their peak.” Erwin states.

“Yessir. I will get straight to the barracks.” Jean says quickly. He clicks his feet together and starts to motion into a salute before being interrupted.

“Jean, may I ask you a question?”

“Of course, sir.” Jean coughs and falls to ease. He fingers the cuffs of his long sleeve shirt. He can still smell the roasted meat on the fibers, his stomach roiling already from the proteins he’s not used to ingesting. Or maybe it’s having two sets of stoney eyes on him under dull candle light...

“You were in the top ten of your cadet training, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Why did you join the Survey Corps?” Erwin asks softly. His lips press together, roll against each other making it look like he has more to say. Levi seems surprised by the question too, an eyebrow raising in confusion.

“I…” Jean swallows.

There had been a time in his childhood where he associated burning wood to campfires and cooking meat to sausages on sticks. It all mutated that day, funeral pyres that burned flesh to charcoal, charcoal into bone, bone into nothing. Smoke that curled and folded dark streams toward the night sky, carrying the souls of soldiers and civilians alike to the heavens he wasn’t even sure were there anymore. 

The waxy grey of exsanguinated skin, lips that peeled back across teeth and gums. Half a skull, an empty brain cavity. Brown eyes dark and yellowed, dry and vacant. 

Jean stares at Erwin’s desk, sucks in air to hide the tears he’s learned to tame. Has had to swallow down so many in the face of countless friends that lost their voices inside the stomachs of beasts. “I didn’t want to lose hope when all that’s left of our comrades is ash.”

Levi’s eyes grow wide momentarily, before returning back to normal. His mouth twitches as he sways his body forward and away from Erwin’s desk, folds his arms over his dark shirt, and slinks off toward the door. He catches Jean’s eyes, narrows his owns, and walks past him out the door without saying another word.

Jean’s mouth gapes, a cold sweat sticking his civilian shirt to his back. He breathes a few times before blurting out, “Did I do something wrong?”

“No, Jean. You are a fine soldier, and it is an honor to serve alongside you.” Erwin says, never once making eye contact. It sounds automatic and empty. He scribbles something on a piece of parchment. “You are dismissed.”

Jean offers a salute, eases out and heads toward the door. Jean’s suffered from Erwin’s decisions before, has struggled to understand his ability to detach spirit from flesh as he does so often. Morality becoming a certain kind of gray area to place bets on, placing bodies on scales to see which outweighs the other: titans or people?

Armin’s helped him see. Armin saved his life more than once, held him when he was too strong against his internal compass. Saw how morality nearly got him devoured, nearly made him take a bullet to the head. He’d have his own brains dislodged and missing, brown eyes vacant and yellowed and dry. As much as he doesn’t want to admit Erwin is right, war is not a thing that is commanded by morals. It’s commanded by monsters.

He pauses and dares not look back when he says it. “He’s right. You’ll die.”

The scratching of pen on paper ceases. “We will not know until we follow through on the expedition.”

“A lot of us will die. Maybe even him.”

“Jean, you are dismissed.”

“Don’t… Let this be the last thing he sees before it’s all ashes.” Jean peers over his shoulder, blue eyes glaring back at him, sharp and unrelenting, matching the look out on the battlefield. Jean steps across the carpet of the office, to the hardwood of the floor, reaches the door and passes through it and pulls the door shut. He stays at the door to catch his breath, tries to catch where his nerves ran off to after practically performing subordination in the face of his superior. 

Before he leaves, he hears a slam, the sound of metal clattering to the floor, and then... Silence.

**Author's Note:**

> Jean's talk about the ashes is heavily inspired from the PS4 [side event discussion Jean has with Erwin](https://youtu.be/UiIbXB_1sVs?t=1m28s). I love this shit.
> 
> I struggle with this a little bit, because I don't actually think that Levi would go back and to this after the "i'll break your damn legs, blondie" scene... But we all know he would WANT to. Would stay in that damn office all night if he had to try to convince him otherwise. I hope it's still enjoyable while being slightly OOC.
> 
> This is the first time I've really written Jean and Jeanmarco too, so I hope that's not awful either. lol


End file.
